


An Evening Spent Sledding

by sixappleseeds



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Friendship, Gen, OT5 Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-05
Updated: 2015-01-05
Packaged: 2018-03-05 14:33:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3123698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixappleseeds/pseuds/sixappleseeds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Exactly what it says on the tin. 2000 words about sledding, 600 words getting them there and back again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Evening Spent Sledding

Adam Parrish was finding out the hard way that he couldn’t do homework and shiver at the same time. The biggest difference between his apartment and the outside world, he decided, was that at least in here it wasn’t snowing. He sighed, closed his English book, and burrowed under his blankets. He did not bother to calculate how much using an electric blanket would cost him per month. He couldn't afford it.

When he felt someone pounding up the steps some time later, he had an instant to be irritated at the prospect of leaving his blanket fort before that someone began pounding on his door. “Parrish!” Ronan’s voice yelled. Adam rolled his eyes. “I know you’re in there!”    
  
Ronan kept thumping on the door -- _bam-bam-bam-bam-bam_ \-- and Adam knew he wouldn’t quit until Adam actually got up and opened the damn thing.  He contemplated taking the blankets with him, but he also knew that Ronan would laugh in his face tonight and then show up tomorrow with some kind of dream-heater. Adam didn’t contemplate how much he actually wanted that to happen.  He left the blankets behind.  
  
“I need to get you a key,” he muttered as he opened the door.  
  
“It’s _snowing_ , Parrish,” Ronan said, and thrust something dark and rustling into Adam’s hands.  “Put those on,” he ordered. “We’re going sledding.”  
  
Adam held up a pair of thick trousers and raised a brow.   
  
“They’re ski pants, idiot. I brought an extra jacket, too.” Ronan held it up. “It’s not like Declan’s using it. Would you hurry? Everyone else is there already.”  
  
For form’s sake, Adam turned to glance out his window.  “It’s fucking cold outside, Lynch,” he said.  
  
“It’s fucking cold in here too. Only difference is, in here it is also _pathetic_. Are you coming, or do I have to haul you down myself?”  
  
“It’s three flights of steps to the parking lot,”  Adam said as he began pulling on the ski pants. “You’d wear yourself out.”  
  
Ronan’s grin cut his face. “Don’t tempt me, Parrish.”   
  
.  
  
A few minutes later, Adam and Ronan crunched their way down silent streets towards Mountain View High.  The school’s stadium was at the top of a long hill, and that hill was the sledding location of choice for the youthful denizens of Henrietta.  Ronan tugged a plastic sled behind him as they walked, and Adam was grateful for his borrowed coat’s hood. The snow was falling heavily and everything was vaguely orange from the streetlights. Except for the occasional snow plow rumbling by, no one else was around.  
  
As they trudged across the school’s baseball field, though, Adam heard the unmistakable sound of Blue’s laughter, followed by Gansey’s old crew team cheer.  He would have probed inside himself for any pangs of envy, but Ronan grabbed his arm and began pulling. “Hurry up, runt,” he sneered. “Or I will drag your ass in this sled.”  
  
Adam jerked free. “I’d like to see you try.”  
  
“Okay,” Ronan said. He wrapped his arms around Adam and dumped him onto the sled before Adam could do more than yelp, “Jesus, _Ronan_ \--!”   
  
Ronan grabbed the sled’s rope again and began yanking Adam across the remainder of the field. Adam quickly realized that being towed on a sled was a great way to get a face full of snow, and rolled off.  Ronan tripped mid-yank and got a face full of snow himself.   
  
“Fuck you, Parrish,” he shouted, hurling snow. “I was trying to be nice!”  
  
Adam sat up and dusted off his coat. Ronan thumped onto his back and stuck out his tongue.   
  
“Hey, pal!”  Matthew plodded into view, and helped his brother stand. He was so bundled up Adam didn’t recognize him at first. “Hi, Adam! You guys were gone so long we thought you fell in!”  
  
“Fell in where?” Ronan muttered as he reached out his own hand for Adam.  
  
“The snow, apparently,” Noah said, materializing next to Matthew.  “Matthew and I are making snow angels, want to see?”  
  
Ronan smirked. “Of course you are.”  
  
Gansey’s voice boomed from the top of the hill. “Ronan! Adam! Get up here, the powder’s superb tonight!”  
   
Adam peered up the hill, and saw two blurry figures, the taller of which was waving his arms. He turned back to Noah. Snow was collecting on Noah’s head and shoulders, making him look a bit like a snow angel himself.  “You coming?” Adam asked.  
  
Noah shook his head. “We went down earlier. I need a break.”  
  
Ronan adjusted his brother’s scarf. “You brought the saucers?”    
  
“I put them on first base!” Matthew pointed into the orangey gloom. Adam could see two round lumps on what was apparently first base.  
  
“Parrish,” Ronan said, thrusting the sled at him. Adam tugged on the sled’s flimsy rope and glanced at Ronan, but Ronan was already trudging toward the saucers.  
  
“He’s going to make a ramp,” Matthew said. “That’s how we always did it at home.”  He smiled at Adam from behind his scarf and under his hood. “Man, that was fun.”  Adam felt a not-unpleasant twist somewhere in the vicinity of his breastbone. He smiled back.   
  
“Adam!” Gansey called again, his voice like a battlefield commander’s. “Come on!”  
  
Shaking his head, Adam fist-bumped Matthew and began to pick his way up the hill. When he crested the top, he saw that Ronan had installed one of the saucers near the hill’s base, and was carefully packing it down with snow.   
  
“I used to sled here when I was a kid,” Blue said beside him. He turned -- the hood he wore limited his peripheral vision significantly -- and nodded at her.    
  
“Me too,” he said.   
  
There was a slightly uncomfortable moment when both of them remembered sledding here when they were nothing but neighborhood kids, lifetimes ago, and both of them tried to remember if they’d known each other then.  
  
“What is taking him so long?” Gansey said, appearing on Blue’s other side. He wore a neon green set of ski pants, a turquoise jacket, and a bright yellow hat.  Adam felt a little odd in his borrowed winter gear, because it so obviously didn’t belong to him, but Gansey didn’t notice, and Blue didn’t care.   
  
“Ramp,” Adam said, pointing. “Sled. Knowing Ronan, he’s aiming for the moon.”   
  
“Well,” Gansey said. “He’ll be at that all night. I say we go down, and leave the moon for Ronan to take.”  
  
“Sounds like a plan.” Blue, holding her own plastic toboggan, moved several feet back from the hill’s peak. “You two go first,” she said, pointing at the sled Adam held.  “You’re heavier, so it’ll make a good path for me to follow on.”   
  
_She doesn’t want to go with me_ , Adam thought, and was instantly ashamed of himself. It probably wasn’t true, and it didn’t matter anyway. Blue was right: with the snow this deep, they’d need to make a couple of decent paths first.    
  
Adam positioned his sled just shy of where the hill began to slope.  Gansey sat at the front, feet braced on either side.  “Think you can get us going, Adam?” He twisted to peer up at Adam, who nodded.   
  
Adam hadn’t done this since he was about ten, but throwing yourself on the back of a sled wasn’t a skill that required practice so much as determination. “Ready when you are, Gansey,” he called from a few paces away. Gansey tucked his legs under him and punched the air. “Excelsior!”   
  
Adam ran, shoved, and leapt onto the back of the sled just as he and Gansey crested the hill. They zoomed down the long slope, Adam clutching Gansey’s shoulders and grinning, Gansey with both arms stretched wide.  “I’m king of the world!” he shouted as he and Adam finally came to a stop a few yards from Ronan.  
  
“Losers,” Ronan sneered, still packing snow onto his makeshift ramp.  The whole back of his black ski jacket was dusted with flakes, like a kind of inverse tattoo. Adam blinked.  
  
“Get out of the way!” Blue bellowed. Adam and Gansey scrambled off the path seconds before Blue skidded by on her own sled. She shook herself off and began trudging back up the slope. “Ronan,” she called over her shoulder. “Race you!”   
  
Ronan glowered at her, but Blue didn’t turn around. He looked back at his ramp. “I guess it’s done,” he muttered. He grabbed the other saucer and took off up the hill too.   
  
“This ought to be good,” Adam remarked.  He and Gansey watched as Ronan and Blue reached the top. They seemed to be arguing about something -- no surprises there -- until finally Ronan stalked away from the hill’s peak, clutching the saucer to his chest, and Blue marched back to the path she’d ridden down a minute ago.    
  
“On your marks,” Gansey murmured as they watched Blue and Ronan give each other the old hairy eyeball from their respective starting points.  
  
“Get set,” Adam said, and then Ronan was running and Blue was shoving and both of them launched themselves down the hillside.  Blue let out a hair-raising battle cry as she leaned back in her sled, while Ronan, belly-down on his saucer, howled, “ _Cowabunga dude!_ ”  They hit the level ground of the baseball field with audible _thumps_ , whereupon both of them were thrown from their plastic steeds into the snow.  
  
“Let’s call that a draw,” Gansey said as he strode over, but neither Blue nor Ronan was listening.   
  
“Rematch,” Ronan snarled as he lurched to his feet.  
  
“You’re on,” Blue retorted. She was already trudging back up. “Adam!” she called. “Don’t just stand there, help me win!”  
  
“How?”  Adam wasn’t sure he was prepared for Blue’s competitive side, especially if it meant competing with Ronan.   
  
“We’re teaming up!” Blue said. “We outclass these rich kids, no problem!”  
  
“Hey!” Gansey said.  
  
“Don’t get mad, Gansey,” Ronan growled, grabbing Gansey’s arm on his way up the hill. “Get even.”  
  
.  
  
So they raced, teaming up and going one-on-one, caroming off of one another into the snow, and sometimes abandoning the sleds altogether in favor of taking a running leap-and-roll down the hillside.  The snow kept falling, but the paths they’d worn were good ones, and fast too.  Ronan’s ramp was a thing of wonder, especially when approached directly in a flying saucer. Though no one made it to the moon, Matthew claimed Ronan got five feet of air after one particularly spectacular jump.   
  
Ronan and Matthew also demonstrated how two people could ride a saucer at once, provided both people were willing to get cozy. Matthew giggled all the way down the hill, undercut by Ronan’s glorious swears.  
  
Noah appeared, looking both exhilarated and blurred around the edges. “Want to do that with me, Blue?”  He waved a hand at Ronan and Matthew, who were making their way back to the top.   
  
“You bet!” Blue said.  A few moments later, she was sitting cross-legged in the saucer, while Noah perched himself on her lap.  He clung to her like a barnacle. “Someone give us a push,” Blue shouted.  
  
Gansey and Adam pushed together, gloved hands on Blue’s back, and Noah buried his face in Blue’s shoulder. “Oh man oh man oh man here we go...!” he cried as they plummeted over the edge.   They began to spin as the saucer picked up speed, faster and faster, and Noah and Blue hollered in harmony. They hit the ramp and sailed into the air, a flurry of limbs and flying snow. The saucer skidded several yards beyond them, still spinning. Adam could hear their laughter from where he stood.  
  
“Get ready, Parrish,” Ronan said as Blue and Noah helped each other up. “We’re next.”  
  
Adam didn’t waste his breath being incredulous, although he was, and he didn’t waste time being uncertain either, though he was that too. He had to admit that it was a lot easier to clamber onto Ronan’s lap, and wrap his legs around Ronan’s hips, than it would have been with Blue.  Later he would also admit, privately, that he felt a particular thrill deep in his belly when Ronan bared his teeth and said, “Hang onto me, man. We’re flying to the fucking moon.”   
  
Adam hung on. It was impossible not to: two people riding on one saucer required a certain disregard for personal space. Add to that the fact that two people on one saucer made the thing not only faster, but prone to spinning wildly, and it was all Adam could do to cling to Ronan as they careened down the hillside.  Adam’s face hurt and his lungs burned; he couldn’t stop laughing. He glimpsed the fire in Ronan’s eyes out of the corner of his own, and the fierce grin on Ronan’s face, and even then Adam laughed.  He only stopped when they hit the ramp, and that was so he could match Ronan’s cry of triumph with one of his own. Seconds stretched as they sailed through the air. Adam met Ronan’s eyes. He would have started to laugh again, but then they crashed to the ground, tumbling end over end, and he couldn’t breathe at all.  
  
“Well that was fucking epic,” Ronan said a few moments later, his voice somewhere near Adam’s shoulder.   
  
Adam took an experimental breath. “Yup.” A snowflake landed on his nose. He smiled. It was the most ridiculous thing, and he didn’t care.  
  
Gansey and Matthew zoomed down on one of the other sleds, both of them laughing.  Blue and Noah followed shortly after.  “Hot cocoa at my house?” she asked, slightly breathless herself. “Mom was making cookies earlier.”   
  
“Alright!” Matthew said. “There _has_ to be a snow day tomorrow anyway.”  
  
“There is,” Noah said. Matthew high-fived him and cheered.  
  
Gansey helped Adam up, and dusted off his coat. “This is a nice jacket.” Adam pretended he didn’t hear. Ronan, meanwhile, had made a snow angel and was busy drawing horns on the top. Adam nudged him with his boot. “You coming, Lynch, or do I have to drag you myself?”  
  
“Ha,” Ronan said. “Like you could.”  
  
Adam didn’t think he could either, but that didn’t stop him from trying. It took them longer to get to Blue’s than maybe it would have, had they not all been taking turns riding in the sleds, but eventually they clambered onto the porch.   
  
Calla met them at the door. “Wet boots, here,” she ordered, pointing to the tiny slate-covered foyer. “Wet coats, hats, gloves, scarfs, and anything else damp or dripping, there.” She indicated the coat tree and drying rack recently installed in the front hall.  
  
“Cocoa and cookies in here,” Maura called from the kitchen. In a chaotic burst of energy, they peeled off all their wet clothes and shuffled through the house, a many-legged, bare-footed, and tee-shirted creature. The cookies were warm, and the cocoa burnt Adam’s tongue. He was still smiling.  
  
Adam wasn’t sure when Ronan managed to sneak away, and he wasn’t sure where Ronan went, either. Under Blue’s beech tree, maybe. But later, as Ronan walked Adam back up to his apartment, he once more thrust something into Adam’s hands.  “Stay warm,” he muttered. “It’s fucking cold in that room.”  He turned and pounded back down the stairs.  
  
It was a blanket. At first Adam thought it was just a blanket, but Ronan’s gifts were never _just_ anything. As Adam curled up in bed, new blanket tucked around his shoulders, he felt it warm up. Of course Ronan would give him the dream equivalent of an electric blanket. Adam was not sure how to react to these gestures of kindness from Ronan Lynch, but for tonight, he decided to just be happy. He fell asleep smiling, and feeling warm all the way through.


End file.
